


darling, so it goes

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Brother/Sister Incest, F/M, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, POV Outsider, Prompt Fic, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 02:21:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12026076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: Vanozza doesn't want to see anything amiss in the identical marks on her son's and daughter's skin. Still, as the years go by, she can't help but wonder.





	darling, so it goes

**Author's Note:**

> An anon requested "oo ooo cesarelucrezia + 1 pls?" for the AU meme, and another one requested "Cesare/Lucrezia, 1." One soulmate AU for the price of two!
> 
> (Er.)

Vanozza had never wanted Cesare in the priesthood. From his childhood, she recognized that he was the least pious of her children—which would not have mattered so much, except that his blunt, impetuous personality could not be less suited to the cloth. She wanted a different life than Rodrigo’s or Carrillo’s for him.

Those provided rationale enough. If Rodrigo did not heed her opposition, he did not suspect any other reasons for it. But the strongest of all went back further, to almost the moment of Cesare’s birth.

He had a number of birthmarks, most small moles scattered over his chest. Vanozza took no alarm from those ones. It was the other that caught her eye: a mark on the lower right of his tiny palm, no bigger than her fingernail. Some natural discolouration, she would have thought, but for the sharpness and clarity of the shape. Had some great Florentine inked it on his hand, it could not have been more unmistakable: a leaf, a bay leaf.

It had been many years since she saw such a mark on anyone, and of course, never that particular one. Still, she understood instantly. The love of God would never be anything but shackles to him. He was meant for a different sort of love.

She could not tell him that. She could not tell him what the mark even meant. But she encouraged him to find his own path, as much as she could, and defended him to Rodrigo, and let him find a more hopeful sign in the laurel inexplicably imprinted on his hand.

Perhaps she would have told him, but for the day that Juan complained that Cesare was choking Lucrezia. At first, Vanozza just stared at her second son. He sounded more petulant than dismayed, and the very idea of Cesare lifting a hand against Lucrezia was absurd—he’d never warmed to Juan, but he adored his sister. Still, she rushed to see.

Cesare was not choking Lucrezia. But in fairness to Juan, he did have his hand around her neck. Lucrezia was shaking her head.

“No, higher up. Under my hair.”

“It  _is_  the same!” Cesare exclaimed. Catching sight of Vanozza, he betrayed not the least discomfort. “Mama, did you know Lucrezia has a leaf, too? Just like mine.”

Another mark? Vanozza sighed, but made her way over her daughter. Cesare and Lucrezia had always had shared such a natural understanding, an easy, affectionate companionship, that perhaps it only made sense that she would be bound in the same way.

Vanozza lifted Lucrezia’s white-gold curls clean off her neck, leaning down to make out the shape. A leaf for her, as well—almond, perhaps, or…

Her breath caught on a gasp. Lucrezia’s hair tumbled out of her fingers.

It was the same mark as Cesare’s: the very same.

* * *

 

Vanozza quickly calmed herself. She could think of no reason that such a tie could not subsist between boon companions or relations as much as lovers. If no other love had the frenzied power of  _eros_ ,  _storge_  and  _philia_  must certainly be more enduring. Many men loved their friends more than any wife or mistress. Most women, she would wager, loved their families above any husband.

She watched them carefully, nonetheless. They grew up close, very close, but to her deep relief, as siblings and as children. Indeed their adoration often seemed the most childish thing about them. By the time that Cesare returned a bishop and Rodrigo began to talk of marriages for Lucrezia, they had grown up so fast that it tore at Vanozza’s heart. She saw Lucrezia’s expression turn cool and shrewd when no one else did, saw Cesare retreat more and more into suspicious reserve—but it all vanished around one another. They still chased each other, whispered together at dinner, bumped their noses and laughed. She never heard them use silly pet names, only their own, and  _brother_ and  _sister_. She never saw anything beyond that.

She did not believe there was anything to see. But Lucrezia, though not melancholy by temper, had been irritable and languid while Cesare was at university, often sickly. Vanozza nursed her through countless little fevers, trying not to notice how she fretfully itched at the faded mark.

“It’s all so quiet, Mama,” she would say, until the day Cesare came home. Within an hour of his arrival, Lucrezia regained all her colour, dancing and skipping about the villa. She seemed abstracted in thought one moment, all but vibrating with excitement the next. The intermittent rash at her hairline had vanished; Vanozza could clearly make out the bottom of the leaf against her skin.

Cesare was older then, nearly a man—his beard gave Vanozza a terrible start. And he was pale, which he attributed to a poor night’s sleep. It looked more like a poor year’s sleep.

“Did you miss me?” Lucrezia demanded.

Otherwise more withdrawn than ever, he said earnestly, “Every day.”

Vanozza saw Cesare’s hand close about Lucrezia’s neck as they embraced like the siblings they were. It was a light touch, very light, and still she fretted over what this must mean for them.

“I hope you were not ill at Pisa,” she said to Cesare one day.

He started. “How did you know?”

Vanozza, if she had not the heart to sever them, hardly wished to encourage an attachment already doomed to separation. She shrugged.

“You often were as a boy. Was it serious?”

“No, no. I was only tired,” he said. “I get headaches. It is nothing.”

She watched his fingers rub together, and wondered.

Years later—and it felt like even more—Vanozza watched Cesare announce Lucrezia’s betrothal to Alfonso d’Aragona. No Giovanni Sforza, this one; bride and groom talked and smiled and danced very prettily together.

Not half as prettily, however, as Lucrezia and Cesare. Vanozza watched, long-stifled anxieties flooding her once more. She had one child lost to Naples, another just retrieved from the morgue, and now the last two danced on his grave, looking more enthralled than either had with any lover. They said nothing, but then, they’d never needed to; more than once, Vanozza suspected they only half-required words. When they leaned their foreheads together, it looked part of the dance itself.

Alfonso frowned, as well he should. He would be Lucrezia’s husband, but he might have been just another lover. That was their way. Looking and looking, one after the other, always dissatisfied and never knowing why.


End file.
